Kara adjusted her hat and looked down at herself. “Not bad.” She murmured. Her clothing was the opposite of her general preference, a boy’s clothing, rich bright material like most others, but of reds and blues that tended to be worn more by men. A top that skipped the popular triangle pattern that emphasized a woman’s shape to her center, and devoid of the golden threads that summoned eyes to her breasts. Far from it. She reached up and rubbed her chest a moment and faintly winced. ‘Binding these things so they weren’t so obvious kind of stung, I’ll have to ask if there’s some other option for communicating with the Lady Aiwenor.’ She took the deepest breath she could and tugged lightly on the bottom of her shirt as if to ensure her chest was as flat as possible. With her hair tucked in behind her shirt, she passed for a youthful boy unless you looked closely.
And it was in this disguise that she walked past the soldiers and knocked on the door of the estate. A youth in formal butler’s attire met her there, “Yes?” He asked her as he looked her up and down.
She read his thoughts, ‘Peasant begging for favor. Get rid of him.’
“I am here to see the Lady Aiwenor. Just tell her it is about Karlo, she’ll understand, and see me.” Kara answered in a low, barely more than whispered tone.
The door shut, and she waited.
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Nua looked at the kneeling slave that casually mentioned Kaiji’s ruthlessness with a casually raised brow, then slowly lowered it. ‘She may have seemed kind and gentle this whole time, but I remember when I saw her, secured by her wrists and hidden in her own cage. She killed many opponents in her past… she was a noble once. Though I want to hear more about this…’ The thought arose and she was just about to respond, when the knock at the door interrupted them.
“My Lady, a visitor, about Karlo.” Priceless said from just inside the door.
“Send them up.” Nua said without hesitation.
“Diana, you’re dismissed for now, though I’ll bring this up with Kaiji later.” Nua mentioned and pointed toward the door.
“As you wish, mistress.” Diana remarked, rose, and departed with what seemed to be her most enticing attempt at a sashay.
In the brief moment she was left alone, Nua tapped her finger on the desk, “You know…” she said to the empty room, “I swear if I hadn’t had the experience doing something like this in the Minotaur Kingdom first, and if this weren’t for… Raymond, if this weren’t for you…” the brief self deprecating humor vanished at the bitter memory of his corpse swaying from the noose before the crowd… “Who am I kidding? I’d have run out of patience ages ago. Never a moment’s peace. Diana might be right, I need to relax… wait no, she said… well it means the same thing. This is Pas’en, the most debauched of the six great cities. But who would I even consider…?”
Nua put the thought aside when the knock came to the door. “Enter.” She said, and the familiar face of Kara came into the room. Being a free woman, Nua didn’t demand that she kneel, instead she waited until the woman was in front of her desk and said simply, “You look different.”
Kara looked down at the way she was dressed again, not a little bit self consciously. “I didn’t want to be recognized. I’m absolutely sure Karlo is dead now, your slave, the investigator I took to his home… she was right. I don’t want to end up the same way. Karlo was my friend, but he died because he made stupid choices. Being seen going from my work straight to here and looking like myself, is stupid. I want to be paid, but a corpse can’t use the coins in their pocket, if you take my meaning.” Kara did her best to keep her voice level and her eyes straight ahead.
But that didn’t stop the dread. The Duchessa rested her head on the back of her hand that closed into a fist, her elbows up on her desk so that it formed a triangle shape. Her eyes looked as coldly at her as the ice of the frozen winter. Kara shifted a little uncomfortably where she stood, unable to keep entirely still for the silence that passed between them.
Nua broke the empty moment herself at last, “Fine, you’re smarter than he was. I pitied the boy, he had a foolish hope. Ironically…” Nua’s body began to relax and she sat back in her chair, “there was a point in which I’d offered to let him work for Kaiji’s freedom, but he didn’t seem to have the patience for that, so he died stupid instead. Impatience is the leading cause of death among the ambitious.” She waved a hand towards Kara.
‘I wonder how quickly I can get out of here when she’s done?’ Kara wondered with a mental shudder at the gesture.
“So don’t,” Nua continued, “forget the lesson he taught you. Now what do you have for me?”
Kara then related the story of the noble drinking with the starwatcher priest, the overt hostility and targeted toward the Duchessa. The suggestion of some ‘reminders’ of the local faith, and the maneuvering with the local priesthood.
“So they want to send me to the Tlalmok, do they?” Nua reached for a scrap piece of paper. “Do you have any debts?”
“I… well, I rent a place, the rent is high.” Kara’s mouth barely got out those words before Nua started writing.
Nua quickly wrote down a number and some instructions. “Not anymore. I’m buying the place, and you’ll continue to pay rent, but it will be returned to you every month. Call that a ‘cover’.” Nua slid the paper across her desk. “Give that to Kaiji on your way out. She’ll see you paid, that’s a bonus.” She pointed the feathered quill toward Kara as soon as the woman took the paper and her eyes bugged out of her head at the sum she saw written there. “Listen to me, Karlo died for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was talking to the wrong people. You talk to me, or you talk to Kaiji. Nobody else in person. Understand?” Nua demanded.
Kara nodded rapidly, her eyes darting over the number again and again with open disbelief in its reality.
“And one more thing, don’t change how you live. I know how tempting it is to spend that much when you have it, but don’t. People will notice and wonder how a servant at a hotel came into so much money, and then the questions will come, and they’ll go from easy…” Nua took the knife out of her sheath and laid it gently on the desk between them, “to hard.”
Kara paled, her breath caught as the reality of the game she was now playing caught up to her in force. “I, yes, I understand, Duchessa. I’ll open a safe deposit at the bank, keep it there, and… and when I leave my employer, I’ll move away… nobody will ever connect me to this place.”
Nua gave a polite nod to her, “You’re smarter than Karlo was, make sure you stay that way. Drink little, lie well, stay loyal to me alone. After you’ve opened your safe deposit box, bring the key to me to be copied. You can leave your information there, and I’ll send a servant to the bank every week to check the box. If there’s something there for me, a sum will be left behind for you. Otherwise if it is not an emergency, don’t come here again.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Kara’s mouth opened at the improvised and impromptu information exchange she’d just been handed.
“Ye-Yes, of course… Duchessa!” Kara exclaimed, hoping her pitch hadn’t gone to the squeak she felt it had.
“Good, now go.” Nua said, just as another knock came at her office door.
Kara scurried out as fast as her legs could carry her, and left the manor a few minutes later with a year’s wages worth in gold in her pouch, and both fear and excitement in her heart.
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“Enter.” Nua said, and Priceless’s head poked in.
“Mistress, a messenger from the Prince, he wants to see you today.” Priceless said it in such a cheerful voice, that it caught Nua by surprise.
“Very well, I’ll leave momentarily but first, come in, Priceless, and close the door.” Nua gave the order in a gentle voice and pointed, not to the space in front of her desk, but rather to the space beside her chair, which she turned to face.
Priceless didn’t hesitate, she closed the door quietly, approached, and went down to her knees in front of her mistress. Her eyes went down humbly, until her lady laid two fingers under her chin and tilted her face up.
“Are you doing well?” Nua asked, and began to stroke Priceless’s soft brown hair affectionately. “You went through quite an ordeal, and you did it very bravely.”
“Mistress I, yes, yes. I’m happier than I’ve ever been. It was a terrible thing. But what I got from it? That was worth it all.” Priceless said it with absolute conviction and adoring soft doe eyes turned lovingly upward.
“A purple tag is important but…” Nua began, only for Priceless to deny that meaning.
“No… mistress, I mean more than that. Throw me down to leather, and I’ll be as happy. I finally serve someone who… I don’t know how to even say this… ah, loyalty, we are loyal to you. But you give it to us too! You could have cut your losses, but you came for me! You came and carried your Priceless away like the hero out of a story.” She lowered her lips and kissed the top of her lady’s boot. “I have only ever done this in fear… now I do it out of love for you, like my Kaiji. How can I not be happy like that?”
Nua accepted the devoted gesture and when Priceless looked up at her, she replied, “I accept your service and loyalty, but be careful about the rest. It may come the day that I have to give you a terrible order, one that may frighten you, even hurt you. I will not enjoy doing it, but there is more at stake than anything you can imagine, more even than myself. If or when that day comes, I will not hesitate to use you to achieve that goal.”
Priceless seemed nonplussed by the statement, “Mistress, slaves are tools that work, the use many find themselves put to is feeding the Tlalmok. The women who serve as courtesans of the great may have good lives, but their lives aren’t their own. We’re all ‘tools that work’. I won’t pretend it never hurt.” Priceless lowered her head trustingly into Nua’s lap. “I’m your tool, though, and if I someday have to be put to a dangerous use… it scares me, but I know that the goddess who literally carried me out of hell, wouldn’t do that to me on a whim. Use me.” She looked up out of one eye, “I’ve never done that either… always begged for someone not to hurt me… pain is scary. So scary. But it’s OK, if it’s for you.”
Nua didn’t look down at the girl who showed such impulsive affection. ‘If I have to ever give an order like that… I’m going to feel terrible… I hope to my undead god that I don’t.’
“Alright, you can go now, Priceless, assist Kaiji with her work, and both of you take an extra ration of meat tonight for yourselves, I don’t know when I will be back.” Nua said with a generous smile masking her private thoughts as she stood, forcing Priceless to move away from her subservient posture and rise out of the way.
“As you wish, mistress.” Priceless said, bowed, and held the door open as they left the room in unison.
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Sado was on all fours coughing and hacking, tears almost came out, but he’d been hit so hard he couldn’t even do that. He clutched at his sternum and looked up at the monster a few feet away that was staring down at him with a cocky, smug expression framed by beautiful golden locks.
“What’s the matter, Prince of Chains? Can’t take anymore? I used to do this with my student all the time.” Solution said and bent forward at the waist so she was a little closer to him, then extending one hand she wagged a finger back and forth. “Or are you just another naughty boy looking for a little nasty punishment?” She straightened up, brought her hand to her mouth, and laughed at him.
Prince Sado flushed red and punched the wooden floor and glared up at her. “I’m down, not dead.” He said through gritted teeth.
“Careful about that, Prince of Chains.” Solution remarked with a sadistic gleam in her eye, “That can change with a literal heartbeat. I taught that little elf almost everything she knows about everything from torture to murder, and she got lots and lots of practice.”
Sado rose to his feet and rushed in again, ‘She’s pulling her deflections to draw this out, I know she is…’ He hated that, his teeth stayed clenched with battle anger as he threw blow after blow in an attempt to get past her guard. Only to find that she was, if anything, bored. Her hand snatched him at the wrist, twisted, and then he felt her fingers from her other hand at the back of his neck. A flick of her fingers at the base of his skull, and she let him fall on his face.
The thud was heavy, he felt blood on his upper lip while he rose, the smell of his own sweat was tremendous even to himself. ‘If I can smell myself, how badly must I smell to her?’ It was an undignified thought, but it didn’t make him request a halt.
He slowly got up and wiped the blood from his face. She was walking a few paces away from him to take up her position again. “Have you done any translation work at least, slave prince?” Solution inquired when turning to face him.
“Some.” He acknowledged, “Not very well, but I’m working on it while I study the book you gave me on the written language of her homeland. I got, I think, a whole sentence.” Sado looked less than pleased at the minimal accomplishment, though he rubbed his jaw from the soreness that came with recent blows, his eyes were elsewhere.
“I don’t think I’m an unreasonable monster.” Solution smirked again… she always seemed to smirk down at him. He felt his annoyance rise, and quashed it with the weight of the shameful memory of buying his own people with his owner’s coin. “But if you want to impress her in any way, if you want a future of any kind other than to be food, you’ll need to feed her ambition. That will take more than a sentence every day.”
“I know.” He acknowledged reluctantly, “I know that, Lady Solution. Surely there’s got to be something I can do?”
She shrugged passively and tossed him a wooden practice knife. “You could kill for her. The last human she liked, did that. He did it a lot.” Solution said it with bone chilling ease and a pleasant ‘how do you do today’ kind of smile.
“But she doesn’t have any enemies here for me to kill.” Sado retorted with frustration while picking up the knife and taking position with one foot back, the knife back near his chest and one hand stretched out. He crouched a little, waiting for the deadly bodyguard to take her own stance.
“Yes, she does, Prince of Chains. Yes, she does.” Solution’s face became uncharacteristically grave. “She said you were an idealist, naive, clearly she was right. You should know better. Your enemies overthrew you because you didn’t know who they were. Your advisors tried to tell you, it was the other six great cities.”
“So…?” Sado asked, as soon as Solution dropped to a stance like his own, he came on, his knife straight at her heart, her hand came out to turn it aside, and his outstretched hand took her wrist, pulled it aside, and the wooden tip seemed for one glorious moment, like it would strike home.
Then he felt himself falling to his knees and dropped his practice knife, because he was clutching for the throat where she’d hit him.
He fell forward and caught himself with one hand, hacking hard and trying to breath again while pain radiated outward from the center of the strike.
“So everyone who isn't under her thumb is an enemy. Prince Rasgen, Prince Isaura, the mystery ones who took Priceless. The ministers of this city. They’re all her enemies. There are only two positions here. Either as one of her pawns, or on the other side of the chess board.” Solution said bluntly when she walked beside him, and gave him a powerful kick to his kidney that jack knifed his body and caused him to fall entirely to the floor.
“That’s a lesson to you, Prince Sado. Bold has its place, but you go straight for what you want every time, you need to be more subtle about it, you’re not strong enough to just bull your way through everything in your path.” Solution put her smirk back on while he lay on his back, clutching his side with one hand and throat with the other.
“Is she?” He rasped out.
Solution let out a beautiful laugh and shook her head, bouncing her lovely golden curls around. “Absolutely not. That is why she’s an assassin. Killing your enemy at their best is great for stories, but even I know it’s bad strategy. Kill them at their weakest. In their bed, asleep, when making love to their wife or husband. Kill them with poison when they eat, anything you like. But always make it easy for yourself to win. Whenever you can.” Solution explained in the most condescending tone he’d ever heard, even from her.
“That’s not how heroes fight…” Sado grumbled, and she kicked him again, hard enough to send him rolling over the floor. He felt her wooden blade at his neck and froze.
Solution was on top of him, her knees on either side of his body, she sat on him, almost laying down, she grabbed his hair and yanked his head painfully back, then lowered her perfect ruby lips to his ear and whispered in a beautiful vicious voice. “You wanted to be a hero to your people, and you failed, Prince of Chains. Now your women, children, men, old, young, are slaves to the victors. Do you think they’re glad you wanted to be a hero? Or would they just be glad if you’d won, no matter how you got there?”
Prince Sado gasped out in pain, unable to give her an answer, his eyes rolling back in agony, and only then did Solution let go and stand up. “Get yourself to the healer, Prince of Chains.” she said with contempt and rolled him over onto his back with a brutal nudge of her right foot. “Then,” she said, “go think hero thoughts and wash dishes for the house for the day. While you’re washing dishes heroically beside the collared slaves your people have become to your mistress, ask them each… “If I’d won the war we lost, but done it by trickery… would you care?”
She was long gone before Prince Sado managed to even make it out of the building and be healed. For the rest of the day, the only thing hotter than the water of the dishes he spent the hours cleaning for his mistress, was the shame he felt in asking what he was told to, and carving their answers into his heart.